Poems, Dialogues in Verse and Epigrams :: :: University of Virginia Library

Seldom bears
A beauteous mother beauteous progeny,
Nor fathers often see such semblances
As Corythos to his. To mortal man
Rarely the Gods grant the same blessing twice;
They smile at incense, nor give ear to prayer.
With this regretful thought her mind recurs
To one so infantine, one left behind
At morning, from the breast she just had warm'd.
“Will no one ever tell me what thou art,

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Hermionè! how grows thy destined spouse
Orestes.”

Now invade her other cares
How to retain her Paris . . oft she wisht
She had a boy like Corythos . . at least
Hers she would make him by all tenderness,
Atoning, if atonement there could be,
For what his mother by her crime sustain'd . .
But was it not decreed so from above?
She argued . . and remorse was thus appeas'd.

Then Agelaos call'd she, and besought.
“Perform, O Agelaos, my request.

Two youths have been entrusted to thy care,
Paris and Corythos: one care is mine.
Already hast thou seen the torch extinct
That threatened Troy, and strong as be thy wish
Again to press thy earlier pupil's hand,
Be not thou overhasty: let a son
Receive a father's blessing quite alone.”
Then he. “Not different were the wise commands
His mother gave me. Should I see the man
I left a child, he might not recognize
Old Agelaos in these wrinkled cheeks,
These temples sprinkled now with hoary hair,
These limbs now slow, this voice and spirit weak;
Nor haply would the prince be overjoyed
To know his servant had outrun his lord
In virtue's path: my help the royal heir
Wants not; but Corythos may want it, him
Never until death parts us will I leave.”

Revolving in her mind a thousand schemes,
She now decided that her guest should come
Before his father when the harp and wine
Open the breast, and the first lamps were lit
To show the dauntless, unsuspicious youth;
She oftentimes had thought of it before,
And now the day was come.

The Trojans turn'd
Again to strains of intermitted glee,

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Not unafraid, however, of reproof
Tho' mild; the times had so debased the lyre,
And for heroic deeds of better men,
It tinkled now, in city and in camp,
With little else than weak lasciviousness,
Until its strings were stifled with applause.
Helena heard not such complacently;
Adultress as she was, she had not lost
The early bloom of Spartan modesty.

Around the chamber shone the images
Of boys and maidens robed in vest succinct,
And holding burnisht lamps, whence incense wreath'd
Its heavy cloud whitened with cedar oil,
And under them the purple seats gleam'd forth,
And over was the residence of Gods,
And nectar-bearing youth, in light serene.

Helena, now impatient of delay,
Looks often out the portal's tissued folds
Heavy with fringe of interwoven gold,
And often stops when even Paris speaks,
Listening, but not to Paris as before,
And, once or twice, half springing from her seat.

Now enters Corythos: the splendours round
Amaze him, and one image strikes him dumb,
His lofty sire's: he would advance, but awe
Withholds him: he can only fix his gaze
On Helena.

When Paris first perceives
A stranger, of fresh age and ardent mien,
Advance, then hesitate, and then retreat
Disturb'd and trembling, voiceless, motionless,
Nameless, and without call or office there,
And when he sees the purple robe he wears,
Woven by Helena in former days,
Perhaps too for the man she since had loved,
A thousand furies rush into his breast,
He tears it off, he hurls it on the ground,
He strikes with rapid sword, the face, the neck,
The bosom, of his child, and with his heel

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Stamps on the hands in vain to heaven uprais'd,
And hears, infuriate wretch! but bubbling blood,
And one loud female shriek . . Thy child! thy child!